Like a fellow running from or toward a gun ain't got time to worry whether the word for what he is doing is courage or cowardice.

He had a word, too. Love, he called it. But I had been used to words for a long time. I knew that that word was like the others: just a shape to fill a lack; that when the right time came, you wouldn't need a word for that any more than for pride or fear....One day I was talking to Cora. She prayed for me because she believed I was blind to sin, wanting me to kneel and pray too, because people to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.

There is no such thing as bad whiskey. Some whiskeys just happen to be better than others. But a man shouldn't fool with booze until he's fifty; then he's a damn fool if he doesn't.

I'm bad and I'm going to hell, and I don't care. I'd rather be in hell than anywhere where you are.

Some days in late August at home are like this, the air thin and eager like this, with something in it sad and nostalgic and familiar.

Everyone in the South has no time for reading because they are all too busy writing.

Unless you're ashamed of yourself now and then, you're not honest